Relying on glasses to be able to see long-distance, Lucy grew increasingly frustrated with how they were impacting on her day-to-day life. Finding that they were affecting her confidence during nights out, and that she struggled with having to take them on and off while out shopping or on holidays, she was eager to find an alternative vision correction solution that would be more suitable to her lifestyle.

As contact lenses were not an option, after an incident where they broke up and got stuck behind her eye, she eventually started looking into laser eye surgery.

When the global COVID-19 pandemic also forced her to start wearing face coverings in work, resulting in steamed-up glasses which made it difficult for her to see presentations, she finally made the decision to opt for laser eye surgery. While she was slightly apprehensive about the procedure, she was quickly reassured by her mother who had received laser eye surgery 8 years prior and highly recommended it. “Since my mum had it done 8 years ago, I always thought ‘Yeah, I could probably do that myself’. She said, ‘If I can have it done, so can you’. I ended up on the Optical Express website, put my details in to download the FAQ’s, and it just went from there. I just thought, ‘Why not?’.”

Despite her mother’s reassurances, Lucy still felt nervous when she arrived at the Nottingham clinic. Meeting her surgeon for a consultation prior to the surgery, however, helped her feel slightly more at ease. “He just went through the risks, what the procedure was, and if I had any questions. It really put my mind at ease,” she explains. As the nerves still hadn’t completely disappeared when she went into treatment, she was delighted to find that staff members did everything they could to make her feel more comfortable. “They were so nice. The guy Andrew actually, while I was having my surgery done, was like ‘If you want to hold my hand, that’s fine’, because I was shaking.”

Lucy has now achieved 20/20 vision and is over the moon with her results, commenting on how she can finally read number plates, shop signs, and bus timetables. “Yesterday before I came for my surgery I couldn’t read my neighbour’s number plate without my glasses, so I opened the curtains and was like ‘Oh blow me down, I can now see it, without the glasses!’.” Delighted with her new-found visual freedom, a trip to New York is currently at the top of her bucket list: “I want to go to the top of the Empire State and be able to see it with my own eyes, and not the glasses.”

When asked if she would recommend Optical Express to friends and family, Lucy didn’t hesitate: “Those 8 years when my mum had it done and I was thinking about it, I just think ‘Why didn’t I do it?’. The staff, they are so kind and so calming. So yeah, I would definitely recommend it. I’ve actually got on to my dad and said, ‘come on dad, it’s time’.”